


Broken

by Rhianne



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s04e01 Sentinel Too, Gen, Gen Fic, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from Sentinel Too, Part Two, after Blair wakes up in the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

When he looks into the mirror, he sees a face that isn’t his. It has his features – wide lips, blue eyes, but the curly hair is tied demurely out of sight, and he can’t remember the last time he wore earrings.

His once garish clothes are gone. There was a time when his outfits were like a reference guide to the places he’d visited; jackets picked up in the souks of Morocco, garments hand-woven by women from the tribes he’s lived with. They have all long since been replaced with a wardrobe full of muted colours and simple fabrics that somehow seem more acceptable in the world he now inhabits. None of these garments have a story to tell. 

The hospital gown he now wears serves as a physical reminder that something terrible has happened, that somewhere along the way, everything has gone wrong. He doesn’t need to see the gown to know that – every breath he takes causes a bone-deep ache in his chest that will take more than painkillers to clear, and the ominous rattle in his lungs makes him sound as if he smokes forty a day.

Everything has changed, and Blair has no idea how he could have missed it, why it took his own death to finally make him see.

He turns away from the mirror, the reflection burned into his mind like a brand, and he wonders if anyone else sees it, if he’s the only one who’s noticed. 

Blair Sandburg no longer exists.

Instead he is simply a shell; the uncertain, self-conscious remains of the man he once was. 

He has nothing left.

There was a time when he took pride in his work, in the knowledge that he was published, respected in his field and working his way steadily through the halls of academia. But now all that is gone. He spends so much time away from Rainier that he is widely considered an unreliable teacher, and all he has to his credit is a single chapter of a useless dissertation that he can’t submit without breaking his word to a friend. The time when he could have changed subjects is long since past, and he knows there will only be a few more months until he loses his funding.

His friends have mostly deserted him; or rather, he deserted them. Even when he’s not busy working on a case, he is unwilling to field the constant questions about his dissertation, curious faces asking why he is still living with Jim after all this time. Somehow, it always seems easier simply to make his excuses and decline the various invitations than to make up one lie after another.

They don’t invite him anymore.

Little by little, his life has become insular, revolving around one person and one thing.

Jim Ellison. His sentinel, his friend. Now it seems as if he’s lost that as well.

He climbs wearily back into bed, carefully untangling the IV cord before settling gently back against the pillow. When he turns his head, he catches the faint smell of chlorine drifting from hair that feels damp, hours after they fished him from the fountain.

It’s been almost that long since anyone but the nurses came in to visit him, and the initial relief, the overwhelming euphoria that he was still alive, that Jim somehow managed to bring him back from the dead, has faded, leaving him tired and distraught.

Because in spite of everything that’s happened, his brief conversation with Jim too many hours before proves one thing beyond question – things between them are still as broken as they were during that long, lonely night after Jim threw him out of the house.


End file.
